Bees Knees Studios

19/07/2022

For nearly a century before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 Spain was the dominant power in a resurgent Europe, the gold and silver that was looted or extracted by forced labor from its New World mines fueling the initial expansion of the Capitalist World System. This was Spain's Golden Age, the time of Cervantes in literature and Velázquez in art. Yet, as any visitor to the Prado knows, Velázquez was not the only exceptional talent at work in this era. There was El Greco (see separate MWW exhibit), Ribera, Zurbarán. Murillo and a host of lesser lights.

The 166 pictures in this gallery are devoted to the undisputed master artist of the age, Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), who, along with Goya and Picasso, still maintains a place atop the pantheon of Spanish art. While still in his teens, Velázquez established himself as a genre painter of exceptional talent. His growing fame landed him the choicest gig in the realm for an artist, appointment as Court Painter to Philip IV, still the richest and most powerful monarch on the planet. In that capacity he executed many revealing portraits of the in**ed royal family, as well as some simpatico and delightful pictures of the court's jesters and dwarfs. Though one needs to view the real pictures up close to appreciate their magnificence and the virtuosity of their creator, this extensive selection comprising three-quarters of Velázquez' works and arranged chronologically should provide the viewer with a good introduction to his work.

The second section of the gallery contains nearly 200 selections from the work of Velázquez' three talented contemporaries -- Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664), Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) -- all of whom are today considered major artists of the period.

Golden ages also produce a host of lesser lights, artists not considered great but first-rate nonetheless. This gallery concludes with a small sample of 49 works from a dozen Spanish painters who flourished between the late 16th and late 18th centuries.

In 17th c. Spain a painter could only make a living working for one of the two great powers, the Church or the Court. Velázquez held the monopoly on Court patronage and so became an essentially "secular" painter. The others needed to produce "religious" paintings for churches, often on the same theme, in order to survive. (Murillo alone, for instance, produced dozens of "Immaculate Conceptions" and "Adoration of the Shepherds." ) Though many of these paintings are first-class, this gallery keeps them to a minimum, instead opting for works distinctive to particular artists (e.g., genre paintings featuring children, in Murillo's case; tortured figures, in Ribera's).

For another MWW exhibit of art of the period see:
* El Greco - The Agony and the Ecstacy
* Goya - Scenes from Spanish Life
* The Troubled Sleep of Reason: Goya's Graphic Works

17/07/2022

During the second half of the sixteenth century, Italian artists, inspired by the late work of Michelangelo, revolutionized the art of painting with radically new ways of treating light, color and form. The new style, which became known as Mannerism, diverged in three separate directions in the early seventeenth century. Pieter Pauwel Rubens took its innovations in the use of color to their limits. From Mannerism's deployment of light and shadow for dramatic effect, Caravaggio developed the chiaroscuro technique, which was readily taken up by a host of followers. Only one artist, however, carried the Mannerist's novel treatment of form to its logical conclusion, and used it to capture the agony and ecstasy of various states of spirituality. This gallery is devoted to that artist, whom we know today as El Greco,

Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1540-1614) was born on Crete, where he trained in the tradition of Byzantine icon painting. In 1567, he emigrated to Venice, where he established himself with Titian’s workshop, and by 1576–77 he had left for Spain, where he spent the rest of his life in Toledo. In Spain he became known simply as El Greco ("the Greek"), no doubt due to the phonetic challenge his given name posed for the locals. In time, El Greco’s art developed into a uniquely personal blending of Byzantine and Italian Mannerist elements, which proved ideal for the spiritual fervor that often characterized it.

Confident, extravagant and rebellious, El Greco once predicted that his name would "go down to posterity as one of the greatest geniuses of Spanish painting." He was ultimately correct, but it would take longer than he had anticipated for that to happen. For centuries, as the mannerist style lost favor with patrons and critics alike, his star waned besides those of his contemporaries like Velázquez. It was only in the twentieth century that his genius was universally recognized and his stylistic innovations were adopted by artists as diverse as Thomas Hart Benton and Max Beckmann.

This gallery, with its over 300 pictures, presents a comprehensive look at El Greco's work throughout the entirety of his career. The visitor should be forewarned, however, that El Greco did several versions of many of his pictures. We have included many of these in this gallery, so that the viewer can compare them. The differences, though usually only small alterations to facial expressions and background detail, often result in significant changes of mood.

As is the case with all MWW galleries, the works are presented in the chronological order of their ex*****on, and many are accompanied by commentaries, either original or drawn from authoritative sources, which give background on the artist or work in question. (You may need to click "See More" to the right of the full-screen image to access these.)

For more classical Spanish art, see these MWW galleries:
* Velázquez & the Golden Age of Spanish Painting
* Goya - Scenes from Spanish Life
* The Troubled Sleep of Reason -- Goya's Series of Etchings

16/07/2022

By 1500 the secular, rationalist outlook of Italian Humanism had spread beyond the Alps and found a welcome reception among the scholars and literati of those lands. Sometimes preceding it and sometimes in its wake came the "modern art" developed in Italy in conjunction with Humanism. Not every artist in Northern Europe was as enthusiastic about the new creed and art as Albrecht Dürer, though most were quick to adopt the technical innovations of Italian painting. In Germany, Matthias Grünewald and others persisted in a medieval sensibility. And in the Low Countries, Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516) and Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-69) initiated their own "Counter-Renaissance" with works that seemingly went against every tenet of humanism, and which, as a consequence, would destine them to a centuries-long obscurity. Almost all of Bosch's painting was religious in nature -- obsessed with temptation and sin, salvation and damnation -- and consummately non-rational in its details. (Bosch's visions of Heaven and Hell are so vividly and unconventionally rendered that one suspects he had, on some level, been there.) When Bruegel wasn't producing religious works laced with Boschean flourishes, he was depicting peasant life, a terra incognita for humanist art.

This gallery is devoted entirely to the work of these two "retrograde" artists, with a liberal dose of comments providing background and the occasional interpretation. Since both had the propensity to pack an inordinate amount of detail into works rich in action and crowded with figures, a fair number of "close-ups" accompany the pictures -- sixty for Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" alone.

All extant paintings of both artists are included in this gallery. 224 Bruegel images follow 209 of Bosch's. Their arrangement, per usual, is in rough chronological order for each artist.

Bruegel was also a prolific printmaker. For a generous sample, see the MWW Prints & Drawing Room.

See also these MWW companion galleries:
* The Flemish Masters of the 15th & 16th c.
* Going for Baroque: Rubens & 17th c. Flemish Art

15/07/2022

14/07/2022

14/07/2022

As celebrated as the artists of the Italian Renaissance have become, they were not the only ones producing great art in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Far to north in the Low Countries, that other pole of the transalpine trade, another revival of the art of painting was also underway. In the period from about 1420 to 1550 artists working in the Burgundian capital of Bruges and the flourishing commercial center of Antwerp produced an uninterrupted series of works that were without equal in their verisimilitude, their technical and coloristic virtuosity, and their heightened expressive power. This gallery presents a representative sample of that achievement.

We begin with 60 works by the van Eyck brothers, Hubert and Jan. Jan (c. 1390-1441), perhaps more than any other artist in the 15th c., extended the boundaries of painting into areas hitherto unimagined, crafting works of a subtlety and nuance that has rarely been matched since. As the eminent critic Robert Hughes has said of him, "he extended detailed information about things far past the ordinary limits of scrutiny; his eye acted 'both as a telescope and as a microscope,' and it left us with too much, not the suggestive too little of other realist art. "

The rest of gallery presents over 250 works by other Flemish artists of the period, including such masters as Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts the Elder, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Gérard David, Quentin Metsys, Lucas van Leyden, and Marinus Claeszon van Reymerswaele.

As is the custom with all MWW galleries, the works are presented in chronological order, with many "close-up"/detail images of selected paintings, and the majority are accompanied by commentaries. (Click "See More" to the right of the full-screen image to access these.)

See also these MWW companion galleries:
* Bosch & Breugel -- Landscapes of the Post-Medieval Subconscious
* Going for Baroque: Rubens & 17th c. Flemish Art